The Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest wildfire in California's history, releases clouds of smoke in new photos from NASA, and fires blazing over Canada are visible from a million miles away in space.

The crew of the International Space Station have been posting photos of the fires visible on Earth, but they're not the only eyes from the sky: NASA's image releases come from Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) project, which pulls together satellite observations from Earth and makes it available to the community.

Another set of images, taken by the Suomi NPP satellite on Aug. 15, run jointly by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows the far-ranging effects of smoke over North America from fires across the western U.S. and Canada.

Smoke above North America as seen Aug. 15, 2018, by the Suomi NPP satellite.

Credit: Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory/ GSFC/Suomi NPP

The smoke mostly rises high into the atmosphere and doesn't cause an immediate threat, NASA officials said in another statement, but it can be pulled back down as it moves east and affect the Earth's surface. And the fires can cause sooty black-carbon pollution, which creates problems when breathed in.

"Plenty of smoke and airborne particles have been measured near the ground, where it affects the air that people breathe," NASA officials said in the statement. "According to the National Weather Service in Seattle, the air quality in Washington state on August 15 was the worst in the country due to winds carrying smoke from surrounding fires." The next day, wind swept the smoke out somewhat, likely improving conditions.

Air quality also was recorded as unhealthy in parts of Northern California, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, they added. More than 500 wildfires in British Columbia added to bad air-quality conditions in Canada's Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces.

Canada's fires can even be seen from 1 million miles away (1.5 million kilometers), by a NASA instrument on NOAA's DSCOVR satellite, which launched in 2015 to give a long view of Earth's sphere and also track space weather.

Smoke visible from Canadian fires 1 million miles away (1.5 million kilometers) is captured by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera on NOAA's DSCOVR satellite on Aug. 15, 2018.

Sarah started writing for Space.com in June of 2015. Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.